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Every year since the start of Northern Voice, the credit union I work for has been part of a group of people and businesess that volunteer and sponsor the event. We’ve been doing it for 7 years and attending the two day conference has always been interesting.

As part of the event we contribute buttons and a poster which has been done by my son (an artist who lives in Copenhagen). A few months before the event we kick around various ideas of what it should look like. This year’s poster has a bit of a story around it.

Derek Miller (Penmachine) has always voiced how much he liked the posters and has contributed ideas of what they should look like. I wrote him back in March asking him for input. He sent a short email with some neat ideas that went off to Copenhagen. Just before we went to print the news came of Derek’s passing away. It was a sad moment to hear that. We never told anyone until now that at the last moment the poster was changed to add some small print on the boat which reads “In memory of Derek”.
In some ways those two characters in the boat express how when we receive news of someone’s death it shapes us — we look forward and we look backward at a point when we really can’t move at all.

Hi Gene (I’m assuming this is you, I came to this page via a twitter link & am on my phone) – I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to talk to you this year but I still have fond memories of the very first (or maybe second, when still at Robson Square) Northern Voice of being on of the very first to show up and falling into conversation with you, struck by how this event had brought together people from really different fields who nevertheless quickly fell into authentic conversation. Thank you and the Credit Union SO much for your support over the years. You have helped so much in this community growing & showing how a real community-minded organization behaves.